I saw an ad for the upcoming House of the Dragon and I was thinking how there was a time when I would've been pumped for GOT related content but that was before one of the best shows ever crashed and burned. I also decided not to give them another dime till GRRM finishes the books (if he ever does). Luckily I read them all between seasons 5 and 6 so I feel really bad for people who read the first one back in the 90s. It is funny but to this day I won't start a fantasy series if it isn't complete. I remember when I read Wheel of Time it felt so good to read a completed series.
Do you blame GRRM or D&D more for how the show ended? I know the Night King isn't in the books like the show (but I bet the books will have a better resolution to the dead). I also have to wonder if wokeness had anything to do with the decline of the show. Arya is one of my favorite characters and I know they claim they had planned for her to kill the night king all along but I can't help but think if the show had been made 5 to 10 years prior that Jon Snow would have had a more substantial role. I get GRRM likes to subvert tropes (in a good way unlike hollywood) but I think at the very least he should've fought the Night King, or him and Arya together, although they seem to not like the idea of men and women working together.
I also wonder if the reaction to Sansa getting raped had anything to do with the direction of the show. To this day I don't understand all these screeching feminists who get so worked up over a fictional rape but can't seem to find any sympathy for victims of ACTUAL sex trafficking. The Song of Ice and Fire is a brutal world. Plenty of men get tortured and attacked but I will never understand why men can be killed left and right but if someone says a cross word to a woman then the screeching harpies show up on social media.
When you study the world history of slavery it is pretty amazing that objections to it only started on a large scale in around the 1700s
That's actually not entirely true. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that slavery was a sin in the 13th century. Several Medieval and Renaissance popes condemned slavery, as well. On the Eastern side of Christianity, slavery was mostly phased out by the 11th century in the Byzantine Empire.
So in short, the institutional powers of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church were greatly responsible for the end of slavery in Europe. (Serfdom wasn't much better, but it was progress.) I suspect that anti-Christian bias is a big reason why pre-Enlightment abolitionism is swept under the rug.
Thank you! I didn’t know that. I’ve been meaning to read up more on St Thomas Aquinas. I remember Thomas Sowell saying that it would be very beneficial to American students to teach slavery from a global perspective as well as talking about current day slavery. But you are right. The heads of school boards would not want to discuss church officials helping to end slavery.